The Midwife's Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain's Longest Serving Midwives

by Linda Fairley

  ‘Thank you very much indeed!’ I beamed.

  ‘Thank you, Nurse!’ she replied, looking a bit surprised.

  ‘No, really, thank you. It couldn’t have been a better birth,’ I said, meaning every word, in every sense.

  I’m not sure which of us was more flushed with pride, and in that moment I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was going to absolutely love this job.

  That evening Graham and I went for a drink and a meal at The Sportsman Inn with Colin and Marjorie, some neighbours we’d become friendly with. I enjoyed our evening out. The pub itself permanently smelled of smoke and, with its teak tables, low beams and heavy floral carpet, always felt a bit dark and dingy. It didn’t bother me, though. The vast majority of my life revolved around either being at the hospital, shopping for food at Ashton Market or doing housework on my days off, then collapsing into bed tired out.

  With Marjorie, I enjoyed switching off from work and chores and talking about other things. We often swapped make-up tips, all of which involved baby-blue eyeshadow, blue eyeliner and candyfloss-pink lipstick, and we giggled as we bought trousers with bottoms as wide as tents and skinny-rib polo-neck sweaters at Queenies on the market, where you had to go behind a flimsy curtain to try things on, risking flashing your underwear to other customers.

  It was a Saturday night and I was very lucky to have the evening off, as pupil midwives were typically given the worst shifts. Graham complained about my rota from time to time, as we often had to turn down invitations because I was working, so I was pleased that for once my ‘off duty’ had been kind and I could celebrate a momentous day in my life with a night out with friends.

  ‘To Linda, midwife extraordinaire,’ Graham said, raising his glass of beer and giving my leg a squeeze under the table.

  Marjorie and I chinked our glasses of Babycham and we all ordered scampi or chicken in a basket, which was a new fad at the pub and was all the rage.

  ‘You’ve certainly had a more exciting day than I have,’ Marjorie lamented. ‘All I’ve delivered are the cashier reports for the manager at the bank.’

  We laughed, and Graham began to tell our friends about our forthcoming trip to Torquay with his parents, which was a holiday we had planned for June, at the end of my Part One.

  ‘Oh, you two have got it all worked out,’ Marjorie said wistfully. ‘I’ll be slaving away behind the cash desk while you two are sunning yourselves. What a pair of lucky devils you are.’

  I’d been so caught up in my training that I’d not taken stock of my life for a long while, though Marjorie’s words rang true. Here I was, still aged just twenty-one, doing a responsible job I absolutely adored. Not only that, I was married to Graham and was lucky enough to be going on holiday to the south coast. Most people I knew only got as far as North Wales or perhaps Blackpool or the Lake District. Graham’s business was growing very well, and we both had supportive families. He’d swapped his beloved bubble car for a black Austin he lovingly named Isobel, and we’d bought a glossy Red Setter called Sue, who we often took for walks around the lake at Stamford Park. Life was extremely good.

  ‘Thanks for the compliment,’ I said to Marjorie as I gave my husband a little hug. ‘We’re doing all right, aren’t we, Graham?’

  ‘You’ll be having babies next, no doubt,’ Marjorie teased.

  ‘Not quite,’ I said, hastily. ‘I want to get my qualifications firmly out of the way first.’

  My brother John and his wife Nevim had very recently announced they were expecting their first child in the autumn, which I was thrilled about. I still felt I had plenty of time before I needed to think about starting my own family. We’d have children together when it was right for both of us, and absolutely nothing could spoil our happiness.

  A few days later I set off for work in unseasonably heavy snow. I didn’t want to get my work shoes wet, so I put them in a bag that I wore diagonally across the back of my winter coat, and pulled on my favourite boots instead. Marjorie and I had recently bought a pair of kinky boots each from a fashionable little shoe shop in Stockport, and I adored them. Pulling the shiny black leather up to my knees and clicking my little heels either side of my Honda, I fancied myself as Diana Rigg in The Avengers as I ventured out into the crisp, white morning. The look wasn’t quite right, of course, as the dress of my uniform was more maxi than mini, but nevertheless I felt good as I crossed the slushy streets of Ashton, the chorus of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots Were Made for Walking’ whirling around my head as snowflakes collected on my helmet and gloves.

  Turning right into Fountain Street and right again into the hospital grounds, I felt the wheels of the Honda slip a little. Cars couldn’t drive up as close to the hospital as I could on my moped, so the snow on the path approaching the maternity unit at the back of the hospital grounds was still thick and fresh. I watched my front wheel kick up a flurry of powdery flakes, and thought what fun it was to be riding through the snow like this, free as a bird.

  I felt the wheels slip again as I headed up past the entrance to Casualty, and without thinking I pulled hard on the throttle in an attempt to regain full control of the moped. This, of course, was a big mistake. In an instant, the bike seemed to take on a life of its own. My bag swung like a pendulum across my back, unbalancing me, and the whipping wheels of the moped accelerated with a roar. Seconds later I found myself being catapulted through the thick plastic swing doors leading into Casualty, where I landed, dazed and sore, in an undignified heap in front of the reception desk. I heard the moped crash to the ground behind me, and the smell of petrol fumes burned my nostrils.

  ‘Are you all right, Nurse?’ the stylish-looking receptionist said, dashing from behind her desk. ‘Oh, dear, just look at your lovely go-go boots. What a shame.’

  I sat up slowly and painfully, looked at my boots and wailed: ‘I’ve only just bought them! And they cost me two pounds and ten shillings!’

  One of my beloved kinky boots was ripped to pieces, my stockings were laddered and blood was oozing from a large gash down the side of my right calf, which began to sting sharply.

  A male Casualty nurse rushed over to help me up and dispatched a colleague to remove the moped, which I noticed had left a nasty black skid mark across the thick grey lino. Hopping gingerly into a side bay, I glanced around and saw an audience of bemused and somewhat amused faces staring back at me from the waiting area. What an unexpected spectacle they had witnessed, and what a sight I must have looked in my nurse’s uniform and shredded boots.

  ‘Let’s get those boots off first,’ the male nurse said, suppressing a smile. ‘I’m afraid you won’t be “go-going” anywhere else in those!’

  I laughed reluctantly at his silly pun, but my pride was nursing a large bruise, which throbbed in time with my pulse as I lay on a couch and suffered the embarrassment of having to remove my tattered stockings while the now highly amused male nurse prepared to stitch the cut in my leg.

  ‘How did you lose your way?’ he asked, straight-faced, as he set to work putting five stitches in my wound. ‘Was the path outside a bit kinky?’

  He laughed at his own joke while I managed to smile gamely. I think it was either that or I might have wailed again. ‘I’m not going to be allowed to forget this in a hurry, am I?’ I said resignedly.

  ‘Probably not!’ came the perky reply. ‘It’s not every day a pupil midwife comes crashing into Casualty in such dramatic style. Look on the bright side; at least you were in the right place to get yourself patched up, eh?’

  When I stepped tentatively through the doors of the delivery ward later that morning I was greeted by Barbara Lees, who asked me if I was up to observing a Caesarean after my ‘incident’. Word had clearly spread like wildfire, and I suspected I was something of a laughing stock. Despite still being in considerable pain I was keen to minimise my embarrassment, and I readily agreed to accompany Barbara to theatre.

  ‘Come on then, you’ll have to be quick,’ she beckoned.

  I
had witnessed two routine Caesareans already, and a mental image of them pinned itself to the front of my brain. The drill was the same both times, and I pictured myself wheeling the patient downstairs to the hospital theatre, putting on my mask and scrubbing up meticulously, letting the water run away from my hands right up to my elbows, drying my hands on the sterile towel and asking a colleague to tie me into my gown as I pulled on each glove, making sure not to touch the outsides of them.

  The woman would be on the table, already anaesthetised. Women always had a general anaesthetic for Caesarean sections as spinal anaesthetics, or epidurals, would not be used for many years to come.

  Today, everything appeared as I expected when I entered the theatre with Barbara. The patient, Audrey Wainwright, was draped in green towels, one of which had a window cut out revealing her abdomen. Barbara told me that Mrs Wainwright had been quite poorly with high blood pressure, which was what had prompted the Caesarean.

  ‘Doctor thought it best not to risk it getting any higher,’ Barbara explained. ‘She’s almost full term, so it wasn’t worth taking the risk of things going wrong at this late stage.’

  High blood pressure, I knew, could threaten the life of both mother and baby, and was to be avoided at all costs. I was very glad Mrs Wainwright was in safe hands, having her baby delivered sensibly early.

  I could see by the way the surgeon had draped the theatre towels around her abdomen that Mrs Wainwright was destined to have a horizontal incision, known as a bikini cut, rather than a larger classical cut, which would run vertically down from the navel. This, I knew, would only have been used if the baby was very distressed, and I felt reassured that this was therefore not an emergency situation.

  I stood near the operating table, concentrating hard and watching very carefully as the surgeon got to work. He cut the skin and cauterised the bleeding with a hot diathermy needle, then with remarkably impressive speed he began cutting through the layers of muscle and fat to get through to the uterus.

  I watched in fascination, mesmerised by the flashing steel and the surgeon’s nimble, busy hands, which were flooded in brightness from the theatre lights overhead. Any minute now the surgeon would pierce the membranes, I anticipated. The baby was tantalisingly close to being born. In my peripheral vision I was aware of the scrub nurse laying out a clean scalpel, as well as dissecting forceps and curved scissors on a table beside the bed. I saw her pass a swab to the surgeon, who mopped the wound. Now I saw a suction nozzle, too, in readiness for the moment the foetal sac would be punctured, which I predicted would be any second now. In my mind’s eye I was following the pages in my midwifery textbook, as well as remembering the two Caesareans I’d seen before. I knew what came next and was almost seeing each move a split second before it happened.

  Suddenly, I became aware of the surgeon muttering something about blood pressure. The mother’s blood pressure was high, too high. I had not anticipated this turn of events, or the uncharacteristically sharp edge to the surgeon’s naturally soft voice. I felt my nerves tense as I tore my eyes from the open abdomen and swept them around the theatre table. To my horror, I saw the surgeon and Barbara catch eyes and share an anxious glance. The surgeon broke the waters expertly, and seconds later he was lifting the baby out, holding the little body upside down. This was to facilitate pulmonary drainage. I knew that’s what the textbook said, but I sensed this was not a textbook birth.

  I instinctively took a step back. My textbook was being torn up in my head. Barbara glanced at the clock, noting the time of birth. The surgeon was using clamps and scissors to cut the cord. I braced myself for the silence, sensing that we were not going to hear this baby cry. I could see that it wasn’t moving, but that can happen. That’s what I was thinking, desperately.

  Barbara wrapped the baby in a sterile cotton blanket. First she used mechanical suction to clear his airway. Done. Good – there was mucus and the blockage was gone. Now oxygen to resuscitate him, fast. That’s what he needed urgently.

  ‘Get the paediatrician!’ Barbara shouted. The baby’s skin was white, not pink. He looked limp, fast asleep. His cord, which had been clamped and tied, looked feeble and floppy.

  Barbara extended his head slightly, lifting his chin up, as she placed him in the resuscitaire and set to work, trying to revive him under the heat and light, with oxygen pumped through a tiny nozzle. She also gave him cardiac massage, gently pushing his chest with two fingers in quick succession, time and time again.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she was saying earnestly, almost pleadingly. ‘Yes, keep going. Keep going, go on. Please breathe.’

  The paediatrician ran in and tried for many minutes to revive the baby, but the little boy remained still and never took a breath. He had needed more oxygen in the womb, and now he was beyond help. Tragically, this baby had been born just too late, and we had no chance of saving him. He was stillborn.

  The realisation hit me very hard, almost like a physical blow to my body. The muscles around my heart tightened and I felt choked and helpless as I stood in shocked silence, watching the paediatrician shake his head sadly and step away from the resuscitaire, head bowed.

  Barbara wrapped the baby up extra-carefully and laid him tenderly in a prepared cot. He looked perfect, just fast asleep. I started to cry, and I could see that Barbara was close to tears too.

  ‘She will be waking up soon,’ Barbara whispered in a thin, quivering voice.

  I sniffed back my tears, thinking Barbara was cautioning me not to cry in front of the bereaved mother. In fact, as she continued to talk I realised Barbara was simply letting me know what would happen next.

  ‘I will take the baby away before she wakes,’ she explained.

  Her words highlighted the finality of it all. The baby was dead, and that was the right thing to do. I knew that. We’d discussed it in class one day. The tutor had told us clearly: ‘The appropriate action is to remove the baby before the mother sees it, with the minimum of fuss. It is too distressing for a woman to have to see her dead baby. It is best to wait for her to ask questions and let the truth dawn on her. If this task falls to you, tell the truth and offer condolence, but choose your words carefully. For example, you must never tell her it will be all right next time, because you do not know that.’

  I remembered that lesson vividly, because it had jolted me rudely back to my time on Casualty, when the young car crash victim, Tabitha, had died. I had already made the dreadful error of telling a mother things would be all right when they wouldn’t be, and I knew I would never, ever repeat that mistake.

  As Barbara wheeled the baby out of the hushed theatre in his cot, unwelcome images entered my head. I knew that babies like this were sometimes placed discreetly inside another person’s coffin, so as to give them a dignified burial without putting the parents through the ordeal of a funeral. I didn’t want to think about this, but in my shock I couldn’t control my thoughts. It was practically unheard of back then to hold a funeral for a stillborn baby. I couldn’t bear to think of this little mite being laid beside a stranger, or even left alone in the mortuary. Whatever happened, it was certainly not what his mum had planned, and I felt utterly devastated.

  Mercifully, Barbara had returned by the time Mrs Wainwright began to stir. I hadn’t met the lady before this day, and despite my training I didn’t have a clue what to say or do. Barbara stroked the back of her hand as her eyes flickered and she slowly became aware of her surroundings.

  ‘What is it?’ Mrs Wainwright asked, disorientated. ‘Wh-what’s happened?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry …’ Barbara started, which made Mrs Wainwright snap her eyes wide open and look down at her deflated belly. She had been stitched by now, and a large sterile pad lay across her empty abdomen.

  ‘Wh-wh-where’s my baby?’ she asked, panic rising in her voice.

  ‘I’m afraid your baby didn’t live,’ Barbara said compassionately. She tilted her head to one side and leaned over Mrs Wainwright. For a moment I wondered if she
was going to give the poor woman a hug, but then I realised Barbara was positioned in such a way as to stop Mrs Wainwright from falling should she try to get up off the bed.

  ‘You had a little boy but he didn’t take a breath. I’m so very sorry.’

  I took hold of Mrs Wainwright’s other hand and held it tight as her tears started to flow uncontrollably.

  ‘What will I tell my Gordon?’ she wailed. ‘What will I tell ’im? We wanted this baby so much! Why did he have to die? Why didn’t he take a breath? We wanted him so much. Did you know, we tried for years and years to have this baby? Years and years!’

  Each word she spoke sounded more urgent, more desperate than the last.

  ‘Why?’ she shouted eventually. ‘What was wrong with him? TELL ME, TELL ME, TELL ME NOWWWWW!’

  Barbara caught my eye and gave a little shake of her head. I knew not to try to answer. She had suffered from dangerously high blood pressure in the latter stages of her pregnancy and, as far as we knew, that is what had led to this calamitous outcome. A doctor would explain more in due course. It wasn’t our place to discuss that with her, and it certainly wasn’t the time.

  ‘The doctor will come and see you soon,’ Barbara began to explain, but Mrs Wainwright wasn’t listening. She threw our hands away with an unexpected amount of force and let out a series of howls that came from somewhere very dark and deep within her wounded belly. I didn’t know that bereavement had a sound until that moment, and I had never heard anything so distressing. Each wretched wail ripped up from her belly, spilling unimaginable pain into the air I breathed.

  ‘In that theatre, it really dawned on me how precious life is,’ I said to Graham that night.

  He’d already let me have a good cry, and now he was letting me talk.

  ‘I mean, we all know life is precious, but I don’t think I realised just how precious life is, until today. I can’t get over what happened, I really can’t. That baby should have lived. It had survived for months and months and was just waiting to be born. Why didn’t we deliver Mrs Wainwright earlier? Why didn’t the doctors realise he was going to die if we waited until today? It’s just not fair. That’s what I can’t accept. Some girls have sex once behind the bike shed and end up with babies they don’t even want. Others have babies to order, and to them it’s like shelling peas. Then you get someone like poor Mrs Wainwright. Her baby was longed for. She and her husband had been trying for years to have a baby. They wanted him so much, and yet it has ended in the most terrible tragedy. It’s so unfair. You should have heard her, Graham, she was absolutely hysterical.’